Psst: Want to know how the pope rocked out with Bono? Wonder who's the next bishop of Dallas? Curious whether the Latin Mass is making a comeback?

For those answers and more, check out Rocco Palmo, a slim, professorial-looking 24-year-old Philadelphian whose blog, Whispers in the Loggia, has become must reading for Catholics ranging from lofty Italian cardinals to guys like, well, Denver software engineer Eric Schwartz.

Schwartz was among the crowd of 100-plus who piled into Braun's Bar and Grill Friday night to hear Palmo talk on his unlikely success as top Vatican scoopster.

Said Schwartz, 32, "I was raised Catholic but found a lot of the stuff impenetrable. He makes the hierarchy more like ordinary people."

A beer bottle at hand, facing an easygoing crowd hoisting libations of their own, Palmo was part of a weekend Catholic conference in Denver.

Palmo, from an Italian-speaking family, including a dad in the news business, started with three readers and now gets 15,000 hits a day. Best of all, powerful churchmen feed him the kind of inside stuff that's whispered in the hallways (loggia, in Italian).

"Call me beat writer for the red socks - cardinals wear red socks," Palmo cracks to his admiring listeners, who were there for Theology on Tap, a recurring rendezvous at a local bar that was launched in 2001 by Archbishop Charles Chaput (a hero of Palmo's) as a way for the church to connect with Generations X, Y and Z.

"We really need to be out there in the culture," Palmo tells his peers, a top message of John Paul II and reinforced by Chaput, who launched a lively e-mail friendship with Palmo when the blogger was 14.

The Denver connection "is when I fell in love with the church," Palmo says, urging his listeners to live their faith. "We have nothing to be afraid of; we've been around 2,000 years!" he says.

For all his success, the charmingly geeky University of Pennsylvania grad lives at home with his folks. He brings in cash writing for The Tablet, a London-based Catholic weekly. He admires the broadcasting chops of Howard Stern, and on his days off, you'll likely find him in the back of a Philly bar listening to acoustic musicians.

But his passion is covering Rome better than anyone. "This isn't gossip," he says. "This is all hard-sourced news."

Palmo tells the crowd how he got the scoop on a new Dallas bishop, and about the mutual admiration society between John Paul II and the rocker Bono. Expanding on a previously reported meeting, he recounts how the frail pope donned Bono's shades and, steadying himself with his walker, began jiving to an imaginary beat.

And the Latin Mass? It's one in a torrent of nuggets on whispersintheloggia. blogspot.com. As the crowd listens, Palmo is in his element: "There's a document on the pope's desk . . . " he begins.

torkelsonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5055